Project Baby – Putting together your dream team

Many of the women who are currently pregnant or have recently given birth are highly educated, high flying managers. We are after all being blamed/credited with the recent baby boom, a whole generation of women who put off having children until their late thirties or early forties in order to have a career. We know how to manage people, lead teams and meet deadlines. We know that having the right team in place is crucial to getting a job done.

Why then, when told – this is how you’re going to give birth and these are the resources you get – do we simply say “oh, ok then”?

As a woman in a position of responsibility at work we would have already answered some pretty big emotional questions before even getting pregnant, do I really want children being the biggest. Having made that decision and conceived there’s then the whole battery of testing and deciding if you’re going to test for Down’s and all the stress and further questions that brings with it. Having made it halfway it is quite easy just to throw your hands up and say “yeah, whatever just tell me when to turn up” but this is the time when we need our business heads screwed on.

Whether you have worked in a large corporate environment or for yourself, you can appreciate the skills and professionalism other people bring to the team. You are a whizz at what you do and have probably felt out of your comfort zone when trying to deal with areas outside your expertise. Be it finance or marketing or computer design, we’ve all felt that sense of relief when someone comes on board who has that as their expertise and we can happily hand that over knowing it’s no longer going to be our headache. We can focus on what we do best.

So who is going to be on your baby dream team? Well conventional wisdom says you’ll be in a hospital, with a midwife and your partner, but who wants to be conventional!